


let the light fall

by straightforwardly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon-Typical Attitudes to Muggleborns, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 15:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9497723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/pseuds/straightforwardly
Summary: An ending, a continuation, and a beginning. The immediate aftermath of Andromeda running away with Ted Tonks.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etoilecourageuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etoilecourageuse/gifts).



Her childhood home had become a funeral parlor. 

Her mother stared at the family portrait they’d had made only a few years before, silent, angry, and grieving. The figures in the portrait neither moved nor spoke: she’d cursed them frozen into place hours before. She was the only family member outside of Narcissa herself who remained in the room. The scattered remains of smashed vases littered the floor, proof that Bellatrix had come and gone. A house-elf had come to clean the mess, but her mother had dismissed it with a flick of her fingers. It’d been the last sign of movement Narcissa had seen from her.

She didn’t know where her father had gone. He’d vanished, sometime between when Narcissa had run downstairs with the note she’d found folded on Andromeda’s desk and before Bellatrix had started to rage.

 _The note_. She still clenched it in her hands, uselessly. It’d been written with dark ink against the lovely, creamy parchment, those awful words flowing over the surface in an elegant hand, and immaculately folded in sharp, crisp lines. Her sister— no, _that woman_ had always had an eye for the finer details. 

She wondered how long it would take for that to fade— for the woman who had been her sister to degenerate to the same level of the filth she’d chosen to surround herself with. Narcissa’s fingers clenched, and she felt the wrinkles form in the smooth parchment. 

At that moment, the wards sounded, a house-elf appearing in its wake. “Mistresses, a guest—”

Narcissa dismissed it mid-sentence with an impatient flick of her fingers, an echo of her mother’s earlier gesture. The elf obeyed, but the unease its news brought did not vanish alongside it. 

So word had already begun to get out. Narcissa had no desire to go and make small-talk with some smug, prying nobody who only hungered for every indiscreet detail she might let slip— and they _would_ be smug, regardless of who it was. Such a scandal, and for the Blacks with their _Toujours Pur_ — even Aunt Walburga, who cared for the honor of the Blacks more than any born with the name, would be eager to divert attention from her slipping grasp on her eldest. 

No, there was little she desired less. But it wouldn’t do to seem as though they were hiding, and when she turned and looked to the stiff, proud line of her mother’s back, she knew it had to be her. Her mother prided herself on her restraint above all, but right then, Narcissa wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t curse the first person to make an unwise comment.

“I’ll see to it,” Narcissa said.

Druella Black did not turn, nor did she speak. She simply inclined her head in a brief movement, before returning her gaze to the portrait.

Narcissa passed out of the room and down to the drawing room.

She’d half-expected it to truly be Aunt Walburga waiting for her there, if for no other reason than because it was the likeliest place for Bellatrix to continue on with her rage once she had left. Or perhaps Rodolphus; it was not implausible to think that Bella would vent her ire to her own new husband, for all that Narcissa felt uncertain of whether any true affection lay between them.

She had not expected it to be Lucius who stood there. Perhaps she should have: Abraxas Malfoy had always had a spider’s talent for hearing news long before anyone else did, and Lucius showed every sign of learning his father’s trade. 

He raised his head from his study of their display case, and looked her over, a quick, assessing look.

“I heard,” he said, and held out his hand.

Narcissa went to him.

It shocked her a little, how quickly she acquiesced. It had not been so long, after all, since they had been little more than acquaintances brought together by their families’ suggestions. But it was a pleasant surprise, warm, like his hand closing in around hers, and she suddenly recalled a half-forgotten instance from their school days: a brief passing in the halls, when he looked a moment too long at her and she at him, before turning away to be swept along to their respective classes.

A pittance of a memory, really. She hadn’t even told Andromeda about it— Andromeda, to whom she had told everything.

Andromeda, who hadn’t seen fit to tell her everything in return. 

She’d inherited her mother’s restraint where Bella had inherited the rage, yet something of her thoughts must have leaked through, for suddenly a soft exclamation of understanding rose from Lucius’ throat, and he reached out to lay his free hand against her cheek.

She looked to him, and thought suddenly, absurdly, of marriage. 

In their girlhood, she and Andromeda had spoken often together of their weddings, dreaming. They had wanted to take that step side-by-side, two glittering brides, one dark where the other was fair. Now she had no sister at all to stand by her when the time came, with Bella already married and the other— gone.

Who thought of such things, at such a time? One did not contemplate weddings at funerals.

Andromeda’s absence was as a burning coal tight in her chest. Lucius’ presence did not take it away, but it did ease the pain a little when she focused on his touch. He’d come and offered comfort where other might have given her distance and scorn instead, and she thought again of their eyes meeting in that hallway. 

Perhaps marriage was not so absurd a thing to think upon, standing here with him.

“I am glad you came,” she admitted, her voice low. She leaned into his touch, opening herself like a wound. 

His thumb brushed against the curve of her cheek; he said, “For you? I could do no else.”

An admission: weakness traded for weakness, vulnerability traded for vulnerability. Her heart fluttered at the weight of it. 

She would never be able to tell Andromeda about this moment.

She looked down at her hands: one, clasped in Lucius’; the other, holding the note Andromeda had left. She opened her palm, letting the parchment flutter to the ground.

Lucius followed the movement with his eyes. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said. She said it well: she nearly convinced herself. “Nothing at all." 

Then she turned her face up to his, and kissed him.


End file.
